Whuddya know! Women actually appreciate the opportunity to have a career, make money and support their families. In fact, they like it so much that, for the most part, they're not too willing to go back to a time when pretty much their only option was to become an unpaid house-cleaning, child-rearing, blowjob machine. Weren't the fifties quaint?
And good news — men don't seem to want that either. The Society Pages recently published some data from The Unfinished Revolution, Kathleen Gerson's 2010 book on modern-day gender, work and family, which reveals that about 80% of women and 70% of men when asked say that they would prefer an egalitarian marriage where the partners share responsibility for housework, taking care of children and breadwinning. Progress!
Unfortunately, an egalitarian marriage sometimes works more in theory than it does in practice (especially when kids are involved), so Gerson also asked her subjects what kind of family they'd prefer if an equal partnership became impossible. For the most part, men resolved themselves to a traditional division of labor with 70% of them saying that they would hope to convince their wives to give up their careers and focus on homemaking. Says one of her male subjects, "If I could have the ideal world, I'd like to have a partner who's making as much as I am — someone who's ambitious and likes to achieve. [But] if it can't be equal, I would be the breadwinner and be there for helping with homework at night."
The majority of women on the other hand — nearly 75% — say that they would rather divorce their partners, continue to work and raise their children alone than become a housewife. Says one woman, "My mother's such a leftover from the fifties and did everything for my father. I'm not planning to fall into that trap. I'm really not willing to take that from any guy at all."
Egalitarian marriages for all!
Most Women Would Rather Divorce Than Be a Housewife [The Society Pages]
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